Conventionally, there has been widely used a disk device which is installed with a magazine for housing disks and in which a disk taken out from the magazine is automatically played. Such a disk device is excellent in operability since the disks do not have to be inserted or ejected one by one every time when playing the disk.
However, it is required that the magazine attached or detached with respect to the device be strong enough to protect a plurality of disks held therein when taking out the magazine to the outside. Therefore, the walls of the magazine main body are thick, and as a result the sizes of the magazine itself and the entire device for installing the magazine are large. Moreover, in order to take out a tray or the like holding the disks inside the magazine, a guiding groove and a rail section are provided on an inner face of a side wall of the magazine. By forming such a groove and rail section, the thickness of the magazine side wall further increases and the gap between each adjacent disk holder becomes wide, whereby the height of the magazine increases and the size of the device for installing the magazine also increases.
In addition, in order to take out a disk housed in the magazine and play the disk, it is necessary to provide a sufficient space in the device, thus the size of the device increases. Particularly, as in an on-board disk device or the like, in the case where a disk needs to be housed in a size of 180×50 (mm), which is called “DIN size”, or a size of 180×100 (mm), which is called “double DIN size”, small-size disk devices are highly demanded.
In order to deal with such demand, a disk device is developed in which a magazine is split, and a drive unit for playing a disk is provided in a space formed by splitting the magazine, so that the disk can be played without taking out the disk from the magazine (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H11-232753, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H11-306637). Such disk device does not require a space for taking out and play a disk, thus the size of the entire device can be made small.
Furthermore, there is proposed a disk device, in which a detachable magazine is not used but disk holders capable of housing a plurality of disks therein are previously incorporated in the device in a stacked fashion, a disk inserted from a disk insertion opening is automatically housed in the disk holder, and the housed disk can be automatically ejected. In such a disk device, an opening, a mechanism and the like coping with the thickness of the magazine or attachment of the magazine are not required, thus a small-size device can be realized. Particularly, in the invention disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-195134, disk holders are provided vertically so that they can be split as with the abovementioned split magazine, and a drive unit is inserted into the split disk holders, whereby a disk can be played without taking it out. Accordingly, further reduction in size of the device can be achieved.
Incidentally, in such an on-board disk device, there is provided a floating lock mechanism for switching between a floating state and a lock state of a drive unit. This mechanism brings the drive unit to a floating state for supporting the entire chassis of the disk device by means of only an elastic member such as a damper when playing a disk, so that vibration is not transmitted from the outside to the drive unit, and brings the drive unit to a lock state for fixing the chassis to the vehicle body when inserting/ejecting a disk and installing the disk on a turning table, so that the disk can be positioned accurately.
However, such a floating lock mechanism needs to perform damper supporting or locking for the entire chassis, thus the size of the mechanism increases, and it is difficult to synchronize an operation of moving the drive unit and an operation of installing a disk on the turning table. In order to cope with this problem, as described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H11-232753, there is provided a floating lock mechanism which elastically supports only the drive unit on the drive chassis by means of the damper, and is operated so as to follow rotation of the drive chassis, whereby the drive chassis can be pulled into the disk holder and thereafter the drive unit can be brought into the floating state. However, the damper is disposed in a narrow space, thus it is not always easy to absorb vibration sufficiently.
Furthermore, such a conventional technology has a structure in which only a disk holding member, which holds a desired disk therein, is pressure-bonded to the turning table, and an inner edge of the disk is held by a member provided on the turning table, thus it is not always easy to stably hold the disk rotating on the turning table. Therefore, it is considered to provide the drive unit, which is swung and inserted, with a disk clamping mechanism for holding a disk between the disk clamping mechanism and the turning table, to stabilize the operation of holding the disk. However, in addition to a mechanism for swinging into and swinging out the drive unit, it is necessary to provide a floating lock mechanism and a disk clamping mechanism, but the configuration of the device may be complicated and enlarged.
Moreover, it is necessary to provide a mechanism for synchronizing an operation of swinging-in and swinging-out the drive unit, operations of pressure-bonding a disk to the turning table and releasing the disk from the turning table, and operations of performing floating lock and lock cancellation. However, it is difficult to additionally provide a component to be swung into a narrow space, such as a drive chassis, with a mechanism for synchronizing an operation of moving the drive unit and an operation of performing floating lock.
In addition, in the case of providing split housing sections with a structure for rotatably swinging and inserting a member installed with a drive unit, the member needs to be swung and inserted at an accurate height, thus it is essential to achieve facilitation and stabilization of rotation. In order to cope with such problem, it is considered to employ a structure for allowing the member installed with the drive unit to rotate around a long axis provided vertically in the disk device. In such a case, however, the size of the supporting structure of the rotational axis section increases easily, and a required space for avoiding an interference with other member also increases.
The present invention is, therefore, contrived in order to resolve the above problems of the conventional technology, and an object of the present invention is to provide a floating lock device which can smoothly and continuously perform an operation of swinging-in and swinging-out a drive unit and switching among a disk clamping mechanism, floating state, and lock state with a reduced space and simple configuration.